Various sizes and types of drills are widely used in many industrial environments, such as aircraft manufacturing plants, to create holes of varying sizes. Such usage frequently results in various size drills being collected in a common receptacle for resharpening, cleaning, refurbishing, etc. after the drills have become dull, burred, coated, etc. during use. More specifically, new or refurbished drills are usually grouped by size when they are supplied to users to reduce the time required to locate the required size drill for each job, and to avoid mistakes. After use, rather than attempting to keep drills sorted, "spent" drills are collected in a common receptacle. The mixed, spent drills are then refurbished (resharpened, deburred, cleaned, etc., as required) and sorted according to size. This same procedure is followed regardless of whether the drills are conventional, i.e., have shank diameters the same as the flute diameters, or are non-conventional, i.e., have a common diameter adapter shank. Common diameter adapter shank drills are commonly referred to as "quick change" drills because they are designed for use in a chuck that has a fixed size aperture and a mechanism that allows such drills to be rapidly changed.
In the past, regardless of whether they have been conventional or quick change, "spent" drills have been deburred and sorted by hand after being resharpened (if required). Obviously deburring and sorting the large number of drills used in many industrial environments is a time consuming and, thus, costly endeavor. As a result, attempts have been made to automate at least the sorting portion of this procedure. In this regard, one prior art machine automatically separates drills of one diameter from a mixture of drills of various diameters using a linear variable differential transformer (LVDT). In this machine, the flute region of the drill is positioned between a fixed jaw and a movable jaw. The movable jaw is moved toward the fixed jaw until the drill flute is gripped therebetween. Then the position of the movable jaw is determined by the LVDT (which is coupled to the movable jaw), and the resultant information utilized to control whether the drill drops into a selected bin or a non-selected bin. While this machine is a significant advance over the prior art procedure wherein drill size is determined entirely by hand, it has a number of disadvantages. For example, the remainder of the mixture of drills must be repeatedly passed through the machine (the machine being reset prior to each pass) to sort all drill sizes. As a result, machine operation is slower than desired. In addition, each drill must be examined to determine whether or not it is bent and/or is unuseful for other reasons, such as the drill's flute length being too short for the drill to be used in the intended environment. Obviously it would be desirable to provide an automatic drill sorting machine that determines this information as well as simultaneously sorts a plurality of different diameter drills. That is, it would be desirable to provide a machine that, in addition to sorting drills, automatically deburrs drills of the diameters to be sorted, determines if the flute length of each drill is acceptable and identifies bent drills, all in a single operational sequence.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide a new and improved automatic drill sorting machine.
It is also an object of this invention to provide an automatic drill sorting machine that simultaneously sorts a plurality of different diameter and length drills.
It is another object of this invention to provide an automatic drill deburring and sorting machine that deburs, as well as, sorts a plurality of different diameter drills.
It is a further object of this invention to provide an automatic drill sorting machine that identifies bent drills.
It is a still further object of this invention to provide an automatic drill sorting machine that automatically determines the flute length of drills as they are sorted.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide an automatic drill deburring and sorting machine that sorts a plurality of different diameter drills, determines if the flute length of each drill is acceptable and identifies bent drills all in a single operational sequence.